Pinterest: the trauma
Do you use Pinterest? I tried not to. I was put off by the fact that it’s yet another huge social media time suck that my already minimal levels of productivity can’t handle. Also, my cynical prejudices are confirmed by sites like Pinstrosity and PinterestFail, which prove that most crafts/recipes/delightfully whimsical baby portraits look a lot cooler in a professional photo than they do when we try them ourselves. But I’ve finally caved.
The list of organized rides that I want to do is a lot longer than the list I have done, and I’ve tried a variety of ways to keep them all straight. Some of them, like this one or this one, I have no problem remembering because they’re so high on my list. Other than that, it’s the internet equivalent of in one ear and out the other. I’ve bookmarked, written notes on scraps of paper (where are those? I don’t know), and I even created a spreadsheet that listed the rides’ months, states, elevations, fees, and driving distances from my house. But spreadsheets are boring.
Despite my inability to retain any of the information I read, there are a few resources that I’ll consult when it’s a slow day at work and I’m dreaming of where to travel next:
Rideofthecentury.com is adequate in theory — rides categorized by state — but lists only a fraction of the events that I already know to be available, and many of the links are outdated or broken.
The people at bikeride.com are a lot better at keeping their links up-to-date, and you can sort by region, state and type of ride (road race, cross, track, etc.); “touring” includes multi-day as well as centuries, metrics and much shorter lengths that I wouldn’t consider worth the entry fee.
And then there’s active.com, which is great as long as an event organizer has decided to use them for their registration process. Using Active as a starting point for research usually means having to dig further into the organizer’s website (if they even have one) because there’s rarely the sort of info you’d want if you’re unfamiliar with the area — elevation, maps, photos, number of participants, etc.
There’s not a lot of overlap in content between these sites, either: bikeride.com lists one event in Kentucky; rideofthecentury.com lists five; active.com lists nine — and the lists are totally different from each other!
It seems that most of the information I’m after is scattered across the sites of independent bike clubs or charity groups. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
This has all been a roundabout way of getting to the point: I’m attempting the world’s most comprehensive list of U.S. century rides, and for the moment I’m doing it on Pinterest. So far I’ve just taken a few minutes here and there to look stuff up and stick it on a board. In other words, don’t laugh at how the world’s most comprehensive list of U.S. century rides doesn’t have that many pins yet.
I’m a graphic designer by trade, so I like the visual nature of a pretend bulletin board. But while Pinterest is visually gratifying and super easy to toss stuff in, it obviously isn’t useful at all for sorting information. Therefore, I’m thinking that this will be the beginning of a much larger personal project that will culminate in a visually stimulating, more comprehensive site that is focused on endurance rides and multi-day tours; sortable by state, mileage, and month; requiring a minimum of clicking and hunting…and useful to people like me, that want to travel and aren’t interested in things like 15-mile family fun rides. Would you use such a site? What kind of information would you like to see? Do you use something similar already? Are you a web developer that wants to help me?
Anyway, for now it’s just Pinterest. I’d like to invite anyone else that’s interested to start sticking things on this board with me. After all, I don’t know the whole country and when I pin a ride in Iowa, I have no way of knowing whether it sucks or not. If you’d like to participate, just let me know and I’ll give you access to the board so you can waste some time with me. Or if you’ve done/know of a great ride and want to send me a link, that would be wonderful too. The only criteria:
- It’s 100 miles or more -or- a multi-day tour.
- It’s not a race, or at least not only a race.
- It takes place somwhere in the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. I know not everyone is from the U.S., but it’s better to focus on one thing at a time.
golefty 
I loooooooooooooooove this idea and followed you! Does that automatically mean I can add some pins?
Sweet! I still had to add you, but I just sent an invite.
I love this pinterest board! I added a link to it in my “adventures-to-be” page and already added a couple rides. I hope I’m not deviating from the purpose too much…a few of them are longer than centuries. Let me know if you want me to stop with those =) and I will do my best to stay focused!
Longer than centuries is totally cool. Go crazy!
Yesssss!